third world divides

Responses to digital divides in the Third World illustrate the best and worst approaches by government and private sector bodies.

     orientation

The most substantial report on African digital divides is the SANGONeT report on The Status of the Internet in Africa.

At a global level the October 2000 conference in Seattle (of course) of the Digital Dividend Organisation (DDO) noted that there are more telephones in New York City than in all of rural Asia, more internet accounts in London than all of Africa. As much as 80% of the world's population has never made a phone call. The net connects 100 million computers, but that "represents less than 2% of the world's population". The World Economic Forum's Global Digital Divide Initiative (GDDI) page announces that "Finland alone has more internet users than the whole of Latin America".

In late 2001 the International Telecommunications Union announced that there are now more than twice as many telephone lines in Africa as in Tokyo, questioning the claim that "Tokyo has more telephones than the whole of the African continent". We've questioned what's a very crude measure: the ITU counts lines but doesn't identify whether they're working and the distribution of those lines is even more problematical, since independent research suggests that Capetown and Johannesburg for example account for a large proportion of the continent's lines.

The ITU, discussed in our Network guide, argues that mobiles will come to the rescue, claiming that by the end of 2001 more people in Africa will use mobile telephony than fixed-line connections and that there will be three times as many mobile users in Africa than fixed-line users by 2003, climbing to 98 million while fixed line use increases to 32 million.

Some of UNESCO's 1996 figures, while problematical, are suggestive of underlying differences:

80% of Haiti's roughly eight million citizens live on less than a dollar a day; 85% may be illiterate.

For gender issues see the 266 page International Development Research Centre report edited by Eva Rathgeber & Edith Ofwona Adera on Gender and the Information Revolution in Africa (2000).

     development issues

The US National Research Council's report Bridge Builders: African Experiences with Information and Communication Technology, (Washington: National Academy Press 96) and Beyond Boundaries: Cyberspace in Africa (Portsmouth: Heinemann 02) by Melinda Robins & Robert Hilliard are of value. Telecommunications Politics: Ownership & Control of the Information Highway in Developing Countries (Hillsdale: Erlbaum 95) edited by Bella Mody & Johannes Bauer discusses infrastructure investment challenges.

Eszter Hargittai's 1999 Weaving the Western Web: Explaining Differences in Internet Connectivity Among OECD Countries paper (PDF) and 2001 Defining a Global Geography (PDF) - the latter with Miguel Angel Centeno - explore the background to some of those challenges.

As background we recommend Exporting Communication Technology to Developing Countries (New York: Universities Press of America 99) by Emmanuel Ngwainmbi, Information Technology in Context: Studies from the Perspective of Developing Countries (Aldershot: Ashgate 01) edited by Chrisanthi Avgerou & Geoff Walsham and India's Communication Revolution: From Bullock Carts to Cyber Marts (New Delhi: Sage 01) by Arvind Singhal & Everett Rogers.

William Easterly's The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures & Misadventures in the Tropics (Cambridge: MIT Press 01) and Annelise Riles' The Network Inside Out (Ann Arbor: Uni of Michigan Press 00) offer perspectives on donor-recipient expectations and relations. Information Technology, Productivity & Economic Growth: International Evidence and Implications for Economic Development (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 01) edited by Matti Pohjola examines aspects of IT development hype in the third and first worlds.

The Role of Social Capital in Development: An Empirical Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 02) edited by Christiaan Grootaert & Thierry Van Bastelaer is of value in considering 'just add ICT and stir' rhetoric.

     initiatives

In contrast to the traditional focus on non-commercial connectivity BusyInternet is a US 'incubator' building telecentres in West Africa that offer community net access (typically 100 computers), a learning center for seminars and office space for net-related businesses.

The Little Intelligent Communities (LINCOS) initiative, developed by MIT and a Costa Rican institution, takes a different track - providing shipping containers that include "a computer science laboratory, a telemedicine unit, a videoconference centre, an "information center with electronic trade possibilities, and communitarian electronic mail and newspaper".




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